Chapter 3: The Years of Silence

Chapter 3: The Years of Silence

Ten years didn't pass in Forsyth. They seeped. They were a slow, creeping stain of time, a decade of holding your breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. We went from being nine-year-old kids whispering about local legends to nineteen-year-old men living inside one. Peace was never an option; we settled for a simmering, low-grade dread that became the background noise of our lives.

The disappearances continued, punctual as a train schedule. There was old Mr. Abernathy, the town drunk who vanished after the summer solstice in our sophomore year. There was Maya Washington, a quiet girl from the year above us, gone on the vernal equinox a year after that. Each time, the same story: a runaway, a drifter, someone who just got tired of small-town life. The Sheriff would make a few calls, Pastor Silas would offer a placid, sorrowful prayer from his black marble pulpit, and the town would exhale, safe for another season. The tithe had been paid.

Forsyth prospered. While neighboring counties dealt with factory closures and failing farms, the lumber mill here never laid anyone off. The harvests were always bountiful. The town was an oasis of stability, and the price was a collective, unspoken agreement to look the other way.

My father’s transformation was complete. The brief, terrifying serenity of that first week had hardened into a permanent state of beatific emptiness. He became a deacon at the church, his life revolving around sermons, bake sales, and "community outreach." The wooden token with the tentacled symbol never left his pocket. He tried, in his calm, hollow way, to bring me into the fold. But I had seen the cost of his salvation, and I wanted no part of it. Our trailer became a cold, silent place of truce between his faith and my revulsion.

The Church's influence spread like a disease, its strange, swirling symbols creeping out from the spire's shadow. They started appearing on mailboxes, little wooden discs nailed next to house numbers. Then bumper stickers on pickup trucks. A faded one was even stenciled onto the window of the Gas & Go. They were markers of fealty, brands that separated the flock from the... well, from the potential offerings.

And then there was the curfew. Instituted eight years ago "for the safety of our children," a siren now wailed across the valley every night at 10 PM. It wasn't the sound of safety. It was the sound of a cage door swinging shut. It kept us in, and it kept the night's business private.

Our sanctuary remained the sluggish, brown creek at the edge of town. It was where we could breathe, where the spire's shadow couldn't quite reach. I sat on our usual rotted log, watching Isaac pace back and forth, his worn folder—now swollen to the size of a textbook—tucked under his arm.

"It's the equinoxes and the solstices," he muttered, kicking at a loose rock. "It has to be. Abernathy was the summer solstice. Maya was the spring equinox. Annabelle..." He trailed off, glancing at Hunter. "It's a pattern. A ritual calendar. If we can predict it, we can..."

"We can what, Isaac?" Hunter’s voice was a low growl. He hadn't touched his new handheld gaming device in over an hour, a sign of true distress. He was bigger now, his quiet strength from years of working with his father's construction crew coiled tight in his broad shoulders. "What can we do? Put up a sign? 'Warning: Town-Sanctioned Human Sacrifice Ahead'?"

The rift between them, a hairline crack after Annabelle's disappearance, had widened into a chasm over the years. Hunter's family hadn't just remained devout; they had become fanatical. His father was an elder, his mother led the church choir. Their home, once a second home to me and Isaac, was now enemy territory. We hadn't been inside in years.

"They have meetings there, don't they?" Isaac pressed, his voice sharp. "At your house. The inner circle."

Hunter's jaw clenched. "They're prayer meetings."

"Don't lie to me!" Isaac snapped, his anxiety boiling over into anger. "I've seen Pastor Silas's car there at all hours. What do they talk about, Hunt? Who's next on the list? Do they draw straws? Do you sit at the dinner table and listen to them decide which one of your neighbors is going to be fed to their god?"

"Shut up," Hunter whispered, his face pale. He was looking at the ground, his fists opening and closing at his sides.

"No, I won't shut up!" Isaac took a step closer, his own fear making him cruel. "You know what happens in that house. You know what they did to your own sister! You live there, you eat their food, you breathe their air. You must hear things. Secrets. You have to tell us!"

That was when Hunter finally looked up. The deep, old sadness in his eyes was gone, replaced by a terrifying, cornered-animal ferocity.

"Secrets?" he snarled, his voice cracking. "You want secrets, Isaac? You think it's just talk? You think it's just names on a list?" He took a staggering step forward, invading Isaac's space. "You have no idea. You sit in the library with your newspapers and your theories, but you don't know the smell of that place. You don't know the sounds that come from the basement during a 'prayer meeting'. You don't know what it's like to have the Shepherd pat you on the shoulder and tell you what a fine, strong boy you've become."

His whole body was trembling, a decade of repressed horror finally breaking the surface. "You want to know what I hear? I hear them humming. A low, buzzing hum that makes the floorboards vibrate. I hear the Pastor talking about 'the great mouth' and 'the holy hunger'. I see my own father polishing tools in the garage that he never uses for work. Tools I've seen him carry into the woods on the night of a solstice."

He was inches from Isaac's face now, tears of rage and terror streaming down his cheeks. "You think I'm not a coward? I'm the biggest coward in this whole godforsaken town. Because I know things that would get us all killed. Not disappeared. Killed. So don't you dare ask me for secrets."

With a choked sob, he turned away from us. "Stay away from me. Both of you. You're going to get us all killed."

He started walking, stumbling back toward the town, toward the house of horrors he called home. He was leaving us, breaking the one bond that had kept us sane all these years. He was choosing his cage.

We watched him go, the silence he left behind heavier and more oppressive than any sermon. Ten years of simmering, of watching, of being afraid. Isaac stood frozen, his face ashen, his precious theories tasting like ash in the face of Hunter's raw, visceral truth.

A cold certainty settled over me. Hunter was right. We were going to get ourselves killed. But as I looked from Hunter's retreating back to the black spire that had dictated our entire lives, I realized something else.

Ten years of silence was long enough. If we were going to die, we were going to die knowing why. The fear that had held us captive for a decade was finally being burned away by a reckless, desperate anger. The pot was boiling over.